International patent application WO99/04338 describes an adaptive forward error correction scheme to be used for transmission via wireless satellite links.
The forward error correction scheme described in this document operates at the data link level of the OSI reference model (a forward error correction code is included in each frame for error correction of this frame). It includes the steps of: calculating a byte error rate, determining a forward error correction code length based on this byte error rate, and feeding back the forward error correction code length to the transmitter. The value of the forward error correction code length is selected in a table storing inverse byte error rate values in association with forward error correction code lengths.
Because it is implemented at the data link level, the proposed method is not well suited to heterogeneous transmission networks like the Internet. Using the described method in a heterogeneous transmission network would lead to a separate adaptation of the forward error correction scheme in each network section that is gone through. This would be very complex to implement.
Furthermore, using a table to determine the error correction code length has several drawbacks.    First, certain assumptions about the repartition and the size of the errors are made in order to derive the values stored in the table. Consequently, the proposed method is not well suited to transmission networks whose states may vary in an important manner, such as mobile networks like GSM, UMTS, GPRS . . .    Second, by the values stored in the table are derived so as to obtain a certain quality after correction. This means that the receiver must store as many tables as achievable qualities.